Donald Clark Plan B

What is Plan B? Not Plan A!

Thursday, June 12, 2014

What does the learning game have to learn from the World Cup?

Most professional sports employ data to improve performance.
Yet football (soccer), in data terms, is not so much the beautiful game as a
rather messy and random affair. Unlike many sports, such as basketball,
American football and baseball, in soccer the ball changes sides so often it is
difficult to identify patterns in the numbers. That’s not to say they don’t
exist. As usual, the data, although messy, reveals some surprising facts:

1. Corners don’t matter that much. Mourino was amazed when
English supporters cheered corners, as he knew they rarely led to goals. The
stats support this. There is no correlation between corners and goals – the
correlation is essentially zero.

2. Then there’s the old myth that teams are at their most
vulnerable after scoring a goal. Teams are not more vulnerable immediately after
scoring goal. In fact the numbers show that this is the least likely time that
a goal will be conceded.

3. Coin toss is the most significant factor in
penalty-shootout success. 60% of all penalty shootouts have been won by coin
toss winners. Goalkeepers who mess about on the line and hold their hands high
to look bigger also have an effect, making a miss more likely. Standing 10 cms
to one side also has a significant, almost unconscious effect on the
goalscorer, making one side look more tempting.

4. It’s a game of turnovers. The vast amount of moves never
go beyond four passes. This has huge consequences – ‘pressing’ matters,
especially in final third of field. Avoiding turnovers is perhaps the most
important tactic in football.

These are just a few of the secrets revealed by Chris
Anderson and David Sally, two academics, from Cornell and Dartmouth, in their
book The Numbers Game – Why Everything
You Know About Football is Wrong.

Bias

Seasoned managers, coaches, trainers, players often get it
wrong because in football our cognitive biases exaggerate individual events. We
exaggerate the positives and what is obvious and seen at the expense of the
hidden, subtle and negative. A good example is defending. Mancini may have been
the greatest defender ever because of what he never did – tackle. We prize
tackling, yet it is often a weakness not a strength. We think that corners
matter when they don’t. Similarly in education, we prize the opinions of seasoned practitioners over the data: exams, uniforms, one hour lectures, one hour
lessons and all sorts of specious things just because they’re part of the traditional
game.

Soccer and learning

If a sport like football, which is random and chaotic, can
benefit from data and algorithms that guide action such as buying players,
picking players, strategy, and tactics, then surely something far more
predictable, such as learning will benefit from such an approach? What we can
learn is that data about the ‘players’ is vital, what they do, when they do it
and what leads to positive outcomes. It is this focus on the performance of the
people who really count, learners, that is so often missing in learning.

Education gathers
wrong data

Education has, perhaps, been gathering the wrong data – bums
on seats, contact time, course completion, results of summative assessments,
even happy sheets. What is missing is the more fine grained data about what
works and doesn’t work. Data about the learner’s progress. Here. We can lever
data, through algorithms to improve each student’s performance as they take a
learning journey. We need the sort of data that a satnav uses to identify where
they start, where they’re going and, when they go off-piste, how to get them
back on track.

Just as the ‘nay-sayers’ in football claimed that the
numbers would have no role to play in performance, as it was all down to good
coaches, trainers and scouts, so education claims that it’s all down to good
teachers. This is a stupid, silver-bullet response to a complex set of
problems. It is partly down to good teachers but aided by good data, learners
have the most to gain from other interventions. Education needs to take a far
more critical look at pedagogic change and admit that critical analysis leads
to better outcomes. This means using data, especially personal data, in real
time to improve learner performance

Saturday, June 07, 2014

Africa - the mobile continent

Africa is a mobile only continent. Phones were never meant
to be tethered to the wall like a goat. Mobile is their natural state and
everywhere you go in Africa, you see people with $10 mobiles. There’s kiosks
everywhere, that offer phone charging, airtime, money transfer, recycling and
repair. We have a lot to learn from Africa in this regard.

Mobile is lifeline

Why Africa? Mobile is far more important to the poor than
the rich. It’s a lifeline to work, money transfer, running a small business,
communications with family, medical advice, vetinary advice, market prices and
increasingly knowledge and education.

Sustainable success

There is a strong relationship between internet access and
economic growth. In a donor-dependent continent where agents of virtue, often
compound, rather than solve problems, the ubiquitous use of mobile is one of
Africa’s great sustainable successes. It’s cheap, compelling and continues to
grow as it’s so damn useful. Small businesses can thrive, money managed and
progress made in people’s lives.

Mobiles & literacy

Last year in Namibia I participated in a discussion about
mobiles and literacy. Cornelia Koku Muganda, from Tanzania, explained why
mobiles were pushing a ride in basic literacy. Every child in Africa WANTS to
read and write, as they want to TXT and read TXTS. We now know that this
constant writing leads to better literacy, a fuller phonetic understanding of
the language and more social skills. There’s even phonics apps to txt in local
languages. School is not cool but mobiles are as cool as it comes.

Mobiles &
education

I’ve always been rather sceptical about m-learning in the
developed world but in the developing world necessity is the mother of mobile
learning, with Dr Maths through Mxit, Wikipedia Zero, even SMS requests for SMS
delivery of Wikipedia in Kenya. There’s a vibrant, home grown m-learning
industry emerging.

Political
transparency

Africa has its share of problems, with cronyism and
corruption but remember that eth Arab Spring happened largely in Africa and young
people across the continent are finding their voices leading to gains in
transparency and political action.

Leapfrogged landlines

They have leapfrogged the landline infrastructure and with
635m mobile subscriptions rising to 930 million by 2019. $10 simple phones,
often with FM radio and torches are still dominant but $50 smartphones have hit
the market. Samsung are the market leader but cheaper Chinese phones are
gaining ground. (Note that Apple has only 3% share of the smartphone market.)
This will make a huge difference as internet access in Africa is largely
through mobiles. 70% of internet use is via mobile. According to a World Bank
study, An astonishing 1 in 5 would forgo basic necessities, such as food, for
extra airtime, it’s that valuable a commodity.

Conclusion

This is a good news story from Africa, something simple and
sustainable that has emerged across the whole continent. This is something that
Africans use with other Africans to improve their lives. For Africa, the future
is mobile. It’s powerful, personal and portable; perfect in a continent of huge
distances with huge problems and huge demand. Scalable internet access offers a
cheap infrastructure with access to free content. (This is a sort of summary of a contribution made to BBC Radio Scotland this morning).

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

A mind blowing week in central Africa at the eLearning
Africa Conference in Uganda, where I was flipped so many times, both mentally
and physically. My mind was repeatedly flipped when I saw the wrong solutions
being forced into the wrong contexts. Conversely, I saw unexpected solutions in the right context. Physically, I was flipped into the Nile on
a White Water raft trip – more of that later.

Technology, learning
and Africa

My opening gambit in a talk to Ministers from across Africa
was to show that we were not far from the Rift Valley, where the first
technology was invented by man – the stone axe (see full article on its importance as a learning technology). This handheld device was to
last for the next 1.5 million years and is a window into the mind of early man.
It showed, intent, planning, ability to find resources, hand-eye co-ordination
and a culture of teaching and learning. We were close to the source of the
Nile, and it was in Egypt that the first writing was invented (see full article), the big-bang in
learning technology, far more important then the printing press. Papyrus
technology was also invented in Africa (see full article). So what does Africa need now?

1. Innovation is not
innovation unless it is sustainable

In asking what Africa needs now from technology and learning
I believe we must stick to a simple mantra – that innovation is not innovation
unless it is sustainable. Sugatra Mitra’s Holes in the walls are now
just that – holes in walls, with no computers, no lasting impact, a waste oftime and money. Tablets may prove to be less than useful, especialy Negroponte's Ethiopian experiment. Before any initiative
is funded or started, do a cost-effectiveness and sustainability analysis.

Flip the mindset away from devices to infrastructure, and
focus spending on bandwidth so that accessibility and prices fall. $50 a month
for an unreliable 126K connection is way too high. This means deregulation and
getting networks built along with free tariffs, such as Wikipedia Zero, for
educational content. Economic growth is closely correlated with internet
penetration.

3. Projects not
pilots

Africa is littered with short-term, funded pilots. A
donor-led, pilot mentality means too many pilots are really ‘doomed to succeed’
and fall flat when finished. Pilots are thinly disguised research projects,
often led by academics whose real goal is simply publication not pragmatism.
Fund projects that have real feasibility objectives and sustainability as their
goal.

4. Vocational not
academic

Africa has schooling and Universities but a huge hole in the
middle – vocational colleges. Yet what Africa desperately needs is not more
Universities but more vocational learning. Economic growth will come from
practical skills agenda not building expensive educational institutions. Why
copy a University system that doesn’t work in the developed world. It’s
expensive, elitist and graduate unemployment is rising. Only 6% of Africans
will even have a chance of aUniversity
education, what about the other 94%. Let’s focus on them, as they are Africa’s
future.

5. Learning not
schooling

The Millennium goals focus too much on simple schooling, yet
all of us eventually leave school. What happens then is important.
Employability and job creation is vital, not the Anglo-Saxon liberal-arts,
colonial agenda. It’s not schools that matter but what is taught and learnt in
schools. Improve the quality of teacher training (take it out of Universities)
and focus on what is required locally.

6. Leapfrog don’t
follow

Africa has the highest growth in mobile penetration in the
world. Everywhere, people have cheap phones and use them to transfer money,
communicate and get on with their lives. Mobile griwt has been the big success story and new, cheap smartphones will accelerate internat access via mobile. They’re cheap and compelling because
they’re useful. Africa needs to do the same with learning, leapfrog with good
infrastructure projects that use the BYOD devices. Fascinating things are
happening on leapfrog infrastructure – a
geostationary satellite above the Congo with pan-African reach – one way
internet access but a start. Then there’s Facebook’s solar powered drones using
infra-red to provide internet access, easy to launch and maintain. Finally
Google’s balloons.

7. Focus on the free

They say that information wants to be free, well education
now wants to be free. We have Wikipedia, Khan Academy, OER, MOOCs (see articles on MOOCs) and so on.
Africa would be mad not to take this stuff, as it’s free. MOOCs are now being
produced by the likes of EPFL, Kepler and the African Virtual University in
relevant languages on relevant topics – and they’re free. With MOOCs Africa has
bandwidth problems, even on
campuses, sowell designed offline solutions are needed. We also need to integrate MOOCs
into local curricula, blendinvolving local faculty, collaborate at the
teacher level.Academic regulations need to be amended and
MOOCs bundled.

Conclusion
Africa is rising and needs, not the failed models of the
developed world but new models that are more suited to the massive demand that
already exists for education and training. This is not more universities but
more vocational learning. The great opportunity here, is to use the great gifts
of the internet, that are already there, for free.

This conference is a small miracle, but it's in Africa and well attended by Africans from across the continent. Once again, Rebecca
Stromeyer and her fantastic team pull together a fantastic conference that
focuses wholly on Africa and is not scared to ask hard questions and seek out
new and radical answers.

PS
News from China may be the greatest boost Africa has seen in a long time. A major Chinese Solar Tech CEO says, "We are not far away from the cost of (solar energy) production for conventional energy. We are sure that by 2016 - or at the latest 2017 - the cost of solar PV will be the same as coal-fired generation in China". If true, at that moment each ail drive economic and educational growth in Africa.